Wednesday, May 7, 2008

First of all I would like to say how happy I am about this announcement, as the Union Bank Tower is easily my favourite building in the city. I feared that it would meet the same fate as so many other iconic heritage buildings in this city (especially as of late) and become a parkade or something else equally as useless.

A lengthly conversation on this blog with an "anonymous" commenter a few posts ago got me to better realizing how valuable having post secondary education downtown is towards downtown revitilization.

An extra 100 apartments to the Exchange area? Bring it on! More students downtown at the Red River college and the Exchange, excellent. Even a new building...and you can damn well bet it won't have a bloody fucking parking lot like that regional health atrocity.

"We need to expand it anyway, so rather than do it on Notre Dame, we want to do this downtown, where it makes more sense for students and the industry."

So...what does the Red River College understand about downtown that CentreVenture and Heritage Winnipeg don't?

I'm not quite sure, but I do know that RRC and the U of W are doing more to "revitalize" downtown and bring more activity there than the aforementioned organizations are. Red River college is bringing students from a suburban campus to a downtown one. Everyone else does the opposite. Even Crystal Developers, when they almost seemed to be Winnipeg's downtown hero, turned tail and ran to the suburbs.

Red River College. Local heroes. Now I can finally say "now that's progressive," without the sarcasm.